


In which Grantaire finds himself tied down

by clayrlibrarian



Series: Stupid amazing hipster students [3]
Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clayrlibrarian/pseuds/clayrlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire wanders a lot. He's okay with that. Except for when he is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In which Grantaire finds himself tied down

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this only took forever. Alternative title: in which the author saw an opportunity and took it. In a manly fashion.  
> Thanks, as always, go to Maddie (fangirl-squee both here and on tumblr) for betaing and general awesomeness.

Grantaire’s realisations usually come to him when he’s drunk. He’s noticed that being buzzed makes thinking about these things easier. Slightly to completely drunk has, for a long time, not only been one of his favourite states of being but also his way to deal with introspection and major life choices. Ideally, he prefers to be in a bar where he can tune out the music and let the conversations fade into background, as he stares into his drink and silently tries not to panic about whatever new piece of information his hazy mind is trying to cope with.

All of this considered, it should come as no surprise that that was when he figures it out.

The fact that he _doesn’t_ want to be in a place a thousand miles away from anyone he knows, however, does.

Grantaire has never been someone who gets homesick. The only person he’s ever missed is his sister, and visiting her unfortunately means spending time with his mother and stepfather. His mother’s inability to leave anything alone and his stepfather’s casual disdain are not something he can take for more than a few days, and there are too many things he’d rather do and places he’d rather go instead to really miss being there.

Of course, he likes the city he lives in these days, but even his knowledge of its streets come from restlessness. Its streets have become a substitute for the rest of the world, when leaving was impossible during sleepless nights and restless afternoons. He’s had too much time for these things before he fell in with obnoxious activists who kept him from getting lost in his own mind often enough, he thinks.

Not even the way Les Amis took over his life changed that. After a few months he needed to get away and had left town faster than anyone would’ve thought possible. Less than 12 hours after they met up for the last time, he’s on a train to visit his sister. Staying in the house he’d grown up in never goes well for long, nothing new there. A few days later, he found himself on the road again. Then looking for a job somewhere far away.

It always takes a bit of luck, some skill and a bit of experience to get one, but here he is, four weeks and two other stops after he’s last been seen by anyone he knows in a bar with some colleagues after work. Perhaps it’s their easygoing superficial conversation, the tone so typical for a bunch of college aged guys, blatantly riddled with casual remarks that would make Enjolras descend on them in all his glorious righteous fury, still believing that his words could do good where everyone with just an ounce of common sense said otherwise. Tonight, he doesn’t feel like arguing or care enough to call them out, really. Not like any of them is worth debating with, either.

One of them makes a remark about the waitresses’ looks, and he can imagine Eponine taking a glass of overpriced alcohol and drenching him in it, and he suddenly gets it.

Usually, travelling was the only way he could get rid of that feeling of being caged, so he runs. Gets out and away, leaves things behind and embrace whatever illusionary freedom he could find.

Homesickness, he's just starting to understand, is just as bad as wanderlust.

The feeling not being where he should be right now, of wanting to be somewhere else, was similar to the itch of wanting to travel. This time the somewhere in question was just a lot more specific.

Even the pang of longing isn’t that different. This time, it's not for something, somewhere, that wouldn’t suffocate him, for fresh air and faraway places, but instead for the feeling of being surrounded by people he cared for in a place he knew.

He leaves the bar, taking his bottle of beer along with him and leaving behind his colleagues to pick up the bill. A dick move, he knows, but he’ll see them tomorrow and there’s emotional revelations he needs to think about.

Usually, Grantaire rejects responsibility with astonishing fervour, runs from anything tying him down faster than anyone else could register his presence. No long term arrangements for anything when he wants to be gone as soon as possible anyways. It’s not as if he’s the sort of person people want to have permanently messing with their affairs. The thing is that while all this has been perfectly fine for the last few years and he has gotten used to never having permanent links to anything, right now, Grantaire wants nothing more than the reliability and idea of permanence having Les Amis around would give him.

It’s the kind of warm summer night that is perfect for wandering around new places but he longs for the flat he shares with Bahorel, for the Musain, the tree with the branches low enough to sit in them in the park and the tiny place where they got shawarma after a night of touring bars. He’d swap new and interesting experiences and all they could bring him for the comfort of these known things.

Saying this is a new feeling is a bit of an understatement.

He didn’t need to run right now, to get lost in unexplored places and new people, he’d be happy to hear the booming sound of Bahorel’s drunk laughter and smell the disgusting Egyptian cigarettes he liked. He’d even gladly endure his subpar taste in music and weird love for Grey’s Anatomy. He misses Cosette’s voice as she tells some small story or other, the tone it takes when she tries not to laugh at something stupid, her smile, her hugs, her taking his hand, her gestures when she gets excited about something she’s explaining.

It’s been so long since he’s witnessed Enjolras, looking just about ready to swing a flag and shoot and die shouting on the steps of the parliament building for the sake of a better future, as he tells them it was their responsibility to make sure the world wouldn’t stay the way it was, that any wrongs of society future generations were to encounter would be their fault, his hair a halo of burning untamed glory serving to enhance the visual association with a vengeful archangel. He longs to see an all too human Enjolras after meetings and classes, leaning on Combeferre’s shoulder, listening and watching his friends with a small smile on his face, a god content with these disciples he’d assembled and defeated by hot summer temperatures and humidity.

In this moment, he actually wants Courfeyrac to have talked Marius into something stupid, for them to interrupt his thoughts by crashing into his field of vision, singing, laughing, dancing, with too many arms and too little respect for personal space. Suddenly, enduring the cheesy pickup lines Courf insisted on throwing around even if Marius was the only one who ever reacted to them in any way seemed more than worth the company.

Thoughtful moments like this should have Jehan to quoting something at him that was either a children’s cartoon, an almost forgotten poet or a trashy pop song that would somehow, perhaps, convey some sort of wisdom.

He’d share his own idiocy with Feuilly and smoke with him on a bench a lot like this one, exchanging and biting observations, after he’d have stormed in on their gathering late grumbling about work and how people in general should just fuck off.

Among all the things he should be scared of with this realisation, the only thing that really felt wrong was that right now they’re all miles away.

Grantaire’s problem has always been that his way of realizing his own feelings frequently included a lot of alcohol and even more frequently included situations where doing anything about them was impossible since he’s been told that drunkenly calling people in the middle of the night is not the best idea.

A week later, he finds himself having disappointed his boss and in a car back on his way to the flat he shares with Bahorel. Important personal thing, he’d said. He feels strangely responsible for not just having run off the next day.

Coming back in the middle of the night to find his flatmate rewatching Grey’s Anatomy from season one onwards definitely rated high enough on his scale of important things. Nothing on this planet quite compares to the experience of Bahorel having a breakdown over the lives of fictional doctors in increasingly unrealistic disastrous situations, he thinks fondly, gets himself a beer and sits down to watch along.

Around noon the day brings him to Cosette and Eponine’s door with food as a peace offering for having effectively disappeared from the surface of earth for over a month. It’s not that he’d intended to do that, really. It’s just that he hadn’t been aware of the fact that they’d worry about him this much until he’d gone online in some small-town library to find a staggering amount of messages asking what he was up to and when he’d get back home. Grantaire hadn’t even been sure he’d come back at all before he found them, really.

He doesn’t even have the time to register which of the girls opens the door for him before he’s being clung to by Cosette. His first, almost reflexive reaction was to hug her back and hold her close to him, to put his head on top of hers and breathe in her scent, to feel her warmth against him and her arms tight around him.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “You said you’d still be a while.”

“Changed my mind. I can change it again if you want me to leave.”

She lets go and playfully slaps his arm. “I’m pretty sure there’s food in that bag, the fridge’s empty, Ep’s still at work and not going to come back for a while. You’re not leaving me alone here.”

It’s only later, after they’d cooked, watched a movie and gotten mostly caught up on their respective summers that they talk about his absence and return.

“I didn’t expect to miss things so much,” he explains, avoiding her gaze and focusing on the pictures on the walls instead. All of them Cosette and Eponine at various ages, most of them taken by Valjean, his complete devotion to Cosette and the differences between the girls and their lives showing just as sharply as their love for each other. 

He’s so very glad he knows these people.

“You never got homesick before?” Even after months of friendship, her openness and the freedom with which she acknowledges and embraces emotions sometimes surprised him.

“I never had that much to miss,” he answers and for him, that’s already almost admitting too much.

He’s glad he doesn’t need to say “I didn’t have you before” for her to understand. He’ll never be good with admitting things like that. Acknowledging a good thing means it can be taken away.

They spend the rest of the afternoon on the sofa of Cosette’s living room, talking, watching things and cuddling, only to be joined by an exhausted Eponine freshly home from a shift at a job she detests and mumbling about how much honest work sucks.

Effectively, he thinks as he walks home that night, through city streets he’s started to love without noticing it, tying himself to these people in this place wouldn’t change much. Soon enough, he’d feel suffocated and want to leave everything behind again. He'll figure it out at some point.

**Author's Note:**

> The description of Enjolras and what he talks about is paraphrased from songs. It belongs in "Zu Heiß" by Farin Urlaub Racing Team and Die Ärzte's "Deine Schuld". I am sure he'd love the second song but be rather unhappy with the first.
> 
> As always, come visit me on tumblr. It's [here](refrigeratorsrock.tumblr.com)


End file.
